(#167521) California sceneries [cover title]. PHILIP FREY, CO'S ART REPOSITORY, publisher.

California sceneries [cover title]. Philadelphia: Philip Frey & Co's Art Repository. Sold wholesale by Janentzky & Co (Sole Agents), n.d. [1880s]. 5.4x9 cm, lithographed illustrations on single sheet, folded accordion style into cloth-backed paper portfolio with small illustration affixed to the front paste-down and Frey advertising leaf affixed to rear paste-down. First edition? This copy is missing the accordion folded sheet with the illustrations. The inside front cover has a tiny circular illustration of "The Cosmopolitan, Yosemite," pasted on it; a publisher's advertisement printed on blue paper is pasted on the inside rear cover. It reads in part: "16 Copyright Photographs / transferred on to stone by a new process rendering them permanent. / From / Philip Frey & Co's Art Repository. / Sold wholesale by / Janentzky & Co / (Sole Agents) / ... / Philadelphia Pa." This is the first, or an early version of this view book. OCLC reports five copies with varying titles and illustrations (possibly up to a total of 24 illustrations in some copies). It includes views of various California hotels, including Mammoth Grove Hotel (Calaveras County), Geyser Hotel (Sonoma County) and Calistoga Hotel (Calistoga, Napa County). Ron Tyler (in his preliminary, unpublished work on Texas lithographs of the nineteenth century) says "these attractive, small souvenir albums full of lithographed illustrations of cities and scenery appeared throughout the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth century ... They were all manufactured in Germany by what became known as the Glaser/Frey lithographic process. Most of the pocket-sized books have hard covers, sometimes with attractive bindings. The illustrations were done from photographs, with the lithographers making some alterations by adding or deleting details … Louis Glaser of Leipzig and Charles Frey of Frankfurt am Main used a multi-stone lithographic process to achieve a monochromatic effect that seems to have been rare if not unknown among American lithographers. Using five or more stones, they laid down a series of separate shades ranging from white to light sepia-gray to the darkest sepia-gray or black. The finished lithograph has a varnished look that creates greater illusion of depth than a simple lithograph or toned lithograph ... The photographs for the albums were probably collected by traveling agents in the U.S., employed perhaps by one of the four different American publishers who distributed the majority of the albums: Wittemann Brothers of New York, Adolph Wittemann of New York, the Chisholm Brothers of Portland, Maine, and Ward Brothers of Columbus, Ohio." A very good copy. (#167521).

Printing identification statement for this book:
No statement of printing.